“Good history doesn’t necessarily make good drama, and good drama doesn’t necessarily make good history.” That’s one of the realizations author Carl Sferraza Anthony voiced last week when he was in town visiting his friend Liz Carpenter and speaking at the LBJ Library. Anthony is most recently the author of Florence Harding: The First Lady, the Jazz Age, and the Death of America’s Most Scandalous President, but he’s been writing about the first ladies since 1981. It may be comforting to the Clintons right now to know that good drama doesn’t make good history, but Anthony probably won’t be writing about them anyway, or at least not about Hillary. Anthony reports that the First Lady has “taken an active interest” in his work and says that he and Mrs. Clinton have come to “very much like each other as friends,” which precludes him from writing her biography. He’s busy enough as it is, though, navigating the process of turning the Harding biography into a feature film or TV movie, which would seem to have real resonance since Harding, who consulted astrologers and regularly corresponded with cabinet members, stands as an eerie precursor of contemporary first ladies. “Yes,” Harding stands as a precursor, Anthony says, “but really [she’s] an individual who stands on her own because in some ways I don’t know if there’s ever been a first lady who’s been quite so betrayed and as a result of that, paranoid and superstitious and also as so iron-willed.” “The hardest lesson I’ve learned in dealing with Hollywood,” Anthony offers, “is that a good story is no longer enough reason to make a movie. [You need] marketability and star power and some kind of built-in market.” And what would be the market for this project? “Anybody who’s dealt with adultery, betrayed friendship, renewed friendship — there are so many things going on.”…
There’s also a lot going on in Empty Without You: The Intimate Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok, and I don’t mean that to be taken as you doubtlessly are thinking I mean it to be taken. Edited by Rodger Streitmatter, a journalism professor at American University, the book features 300 letters from the first lady to Hickok, who at one time was the Associated Press’ leading political reporter. The correspondence was discovered in 1978 when the Roosevelt Library opened 18 boxes of their letters to one another.
Events
Janice Woods Windle will be coming soon to a grocery store near you. She’ll be signing her new historical novel Hill Country at the Randalls at 3300 Bee Caves Rd. on October 7, 11am-1pm; she’s also going to an Albertson’s in San Antonio and an HEB in Fredericksburg. Since Windle is also doing bookstore appearances, why the grocery store route? Her publicist Leann Phenix says it’s because Windle’s previous book True Women did so well on the grocery stores’ suppliers’ internal bestseller lists that it seemed apropos to have Windle sign in grocery stores. (It’s also because, as Phenix says, “people like us are always looking for new places to place authors.”)… SWT’s Department of English and the Lindsey Literary Series are sponsoring a Bicentennial Celebration of the publication of Wordsworth‘s Lyrical Ballads. Dr. Jack Stillinger, a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, will give a lecture titled “Wordsworth, Coleridge, and a Shaggy Dog” on October 8, 2pm, at 341 Flowers Hall. Call 245-2163 for more info…
The Austin Writers’ League hosts the Kinked-Up Follies October 18; this year for the first time two shows will be staged, one at 3pm and one at 7pm at Esther’s Follies with Kinky Friedman and the troupe from Esther’s Follies.
Book news for “Postscripts” must be received at least one week prior to issue date. Mail to: The Austin Chronicle, PO Box 49066, Austin, TX, 78765; fax 458-6910; or e-mail clay@auschron.com
This article appears in October 2 • 1998 and October 2 • 1998 (Cover).